


Epitaph

by gooseberry



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Durin Family, Gen, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, Potentially Sentient Houses, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-22
Updated: 2014-01-22
Packaged: 2018-01-09 16:22:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1148121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gooseberry/pseuds/gooseberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There is a road that leads away from the house. It is gravel, and it is wide and long, a straight shot that runs along the length of the lake. It disappears there, at the far end of the lake, and Thorin knows that it curves to the left, into a little hollow. From there it climbs, then falls, then climbs again. Thorin used to travel the road—he used to know the crunch of tires on gravel, even the feel of gravel beneath his feet. He used to look at the house from a distance, from across the lake, and now—</i>
</p><p> </p><p>  <i>He is as firmly entrenched in his house as the dead, looking out at the lake through wide windows and pale curtains.</i></p><p> </p><p>---</p><p>Japan-Magpie had mentioned that she wanted "a Gothic Bagginshield/the Shining/the Listeners au . . . ."</p><p>I love writing about dead things, so I did my best.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Epitaph

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Japankasasagi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Japankasasagi/gifts).



> Japan-Magpie's prompt was glorious, and in its entirety, it was:
> 
> "I want a Gothic Bagginshield/the Shining/the Listeners au where this is Erebor, and the ghosts of its dead cling to the crystal chandeliers, slither under the wallpaper, take shape and shadow in moonbeams, and the weight of history and desire and longing form a tangible presence in a family heirloom, the Arkenstone, that is slowly driving the old patriarch mad; and his grandson, Thorin, is trapped between his burden of love and family obligation and a driving will to make the Arkenstone submit, and his desire to be free to leave this dark, haunted place, embodied in the soft, light-footed golden presence of one Bilbo Baggins, invited by an old family friend, Gandalf, to visit the wonders of Erebor, not knowing what madness and secrets lay enclosed in its furtive rooms and hidden gardens, or wander freely in the darkened halls, and lurk in the shadows of the gilded parlors."
> 
> The house in question can be seen in this post: http://japan-magpie.tumblr.com/post/72548629105/i-want-a-gothic-bagginshield-the-shining-the#tumblr_notes

Frerin still sits on Thorin’s bed at night, the heels of his feet scraping over the floor.

“Thorin?” he asks in the dark, but when Thorin answers, Frerin is silent. 

He doesn’t follow Thorin as much as he used to, but some days--some days, he follows Thorin from dawn to dusk, from the breakfast room through the parlor, down the long hallways and through the winding mazes. He laughs and he chatters and, when Thorin catches his eye, he smiles, his smile always higher on the left side than the right.

“Thorin?” Frerin asks, and Thorin says, 

“What?”

Frerin shrugs then, and slips through the doorway, leaves the room with only an echo.

Frerin is seventeen years dead.

x

Thorin had thought he would leave this place once, when he was a younger man. He’d only spent holidays here, the brief snatches of freedom between school terms: the snowy days he spent lying on the parlor floor with Dis and Frerin, tossing rolled balls of paper into the fire; the summer days he spent climbing trees and throwing his siblings into the lake. (A hundred nights, when the stars had been brighter than the sun, when the universe seemed to wrap around them.) It was a beautiful house, but it was a lonely house, and boring. He’d said that he’d leave this place for someplace bigger.

He’s forty-seven now, and as firmly entrenched in the family home as his parents and his grandparents. 

There is a road that leads away from the house. It is gravel, and it is wide and long, a straight shot that runs along the length of the lake. It disappears there, at the far end of the lake, and Thorin knows that it curves to the left, into a little hollow. From there it climbs, then falls, then climbs again. Thorin used to travel the road--he used to know the crunch of tires on gravel, even the feel of gravel beneath his feet. He used to look at the house from a distance, from across the lake, and now--

He is as firmly entrenched in his house as the dead, looking out at the lake through wide windows and pale curtains.

When the car comes, rattling over the gravel, Thorin thinks at first it might be Dis, coming home to them. Then he sees Frerin, and the look on Frerin’s face, and he thinks, _No_.

“Who is it?” Thorin asks as he stands from his chair, his knees cracking. Frerin is standing at the window, and when Thorin goes to stand next to him, Frerin scowls, so suddenly and completely that the air goes chill.

“Strangers,” Frerin says, and he takes a step back, says again, in the same whisper as the house, _Strangers_.

The great doors groan when Thorin pushes them open, and there are dead leaves scattered on the front steps. The sunlight is bright though, and warm, and Thorin stands on the top step, waiting for the car arrive.

“It’s a bit like stepping back in time,” a man says as he climbs out of the car. He’s turning in a slow circle, squinting as though that will help bring what he sees into focus. Near-sighted, perhaps. 

Gandalf is stepping out of the car on the far side, and he is saying, “It is the seat of their family. Not the oldest--that lies to the south--but the grandest. It is almost empty now, sadly. There is a daughter living on the western coast with her children--ah. Thorin, you’ve come to meet us.”

“Gandalf,” Thorin says, and he tries to smile, but it feels more like a grimace. Frerin had followed him to the door, but he’d disappeared when the car had come up the gravel way, had whispered, _Company, Thorin?_ before sinking into the shadow behind the doors. It’s put Thorin in a foul mood.

“Have we interrupted?” Gandalf asks, but he says it blithely, already turning to his companion to say, “They’re a kind family, though they can seem cold.” 

Gandalf’s companion seems to be growing more uncomfortable and, when Thorin has come down the stairs to help with the luggage, the man blurts out, “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that we would be intruding. Gandalf--” But then the man’s tongue fails him. He makes an abortive arm-movement, like that can explain what he’s trying to say. Thorin almost feels sympathetic.

“Gandalf is Gandalf,” Thorin offers. “He’s a friend of my father. We’ve learned to deal with his--” He pauses, searching for a word, and when he catches Gandalf watching him, he says, for both men’s benefits, “With his idiosyncrasies. Would you prefer to be on the southern side, Gandalf?”

“Yes, please,” Gandalf says. “Both of us, I should think. The rooms are warmer there, and cheerier. Bilbo will be quite taken by the landscaping, I am sure.”

There are fewer ghosts on the southern side. Perhaps it is the warmth, or the sunlight that reaches the rooms even in the dead of winter. Perhaps it’s because no one else lives in the southern side, and the family’s ghosts only follow where they are wanted, where they are loved. It is a cold, lonely place, after all, and the lights here are always dim.

x

Gandalf’s companion-- “Bilbo,” he introduced himself. “Bilbo Baggins.”--is from the west, not far from where Dis is living with her sons. He’s never traveled so far from home (he says this several times as Thorin leads Gandalf and Bilbo to the southern wing), and he’s never seen such tall mountains (he says this even more often, nearly every time they pass by a window). 

Thorin thinks that if this were any other house, and if they were any other family, they would be flattered by Bilbo’s enchantment with Erebor. As it is, all Thorin can manage is what feels to be a thin smile. He makes sure that Bilbo and Gandalf get the best rooms--the brightest, the warmest, the quietest--and then he folds his arms, asks, “How long will you stay, Gandalf?”

“Not long,” Gandalf says. “A week, perhaps two. Where is Thror? I should say hello--”

Gandalf leaves before Thorin can hedge a guess on where Thror is. In a house this large--in a house this old--in a house this filled with secrets, with echoes and whispers and the warmth of a mother’s kiss--it is rare that Thorin even sees his grandfather, or anyone else still living. Age comes on like a poison here, until the dead are better companions than the living. These years, Thror rarely speaks to anyone but his own ghosts.

“I’m sorry,” Bilbo says without much warning, and when Thorin turns to look, Bilbo is still holding his bag in his hands, as though he’s not sure where to put it. “I hadn’t meant to--well, you said you know Gandalf. He said something about showing me one of the last great wonders of the world, and before I knew it we were halfway here.”

Thorin smiles--a better one, he thinks--and says, “It’s no bother.”

He finds himself stepping into Bilbo’s room, dragging a chair across the thick carpet and the wooden floors. The chair groans when Thorin sits, and the arms of the chair have been warmed by the sunlight streaming in through the window. Thorin runs a thumb along the carved arm of the chair, then he looks up at Bilbo, asking, “How do you know Gandalf?”

“A friend of the family. My grandfather’s, really.” Bilbo has set the bag on the bed, and he’s poking through the room now, running his fingers along the wallpaper, touching the heavy dresser curiously. “This is a gorgeous house, truly. And old.”

“Very old,” Thorin agrees. If he listens carefully, he can hear the house echo him, singing out, _ancient, ancient, ancient in days_. “Nine generations have lived here. Ten, with my sister’s children.”

Bilbo gives Thorin a startled look and Thorin chuckles, sets his hands on the chair’s arms to push himself up out of the chair.

“You should unpack. I’ll find you before dinner. Perhaps, if there is still light, I can show you one of the gardens.”

x

Dis left long ago, when Frerin was only a few years dead.

“I can’t,” she said, “stay in this house. Not now.”

“Not ever?” Thorin had asked, and Frerin, sitting on the arm of the chair, had echoed Thorin, had whispered, _Not ever, Dis? Not even for me?_

“Not now,” Dis repeated. “Maybe, when I’m old--” She’d swallowed loudly, and she had rubbed her palms against the fabric of her trousers. “I’m tired,” she said, “of all these halls--all these ghosts.”

“I’m tired,” she’d said, because she was the one Frerin had haunted first, the one Frerin had haunted the most. She was the one Frerin followed through the house, his hand in hers, his laughter ringing in her ears. He’d loved her the most, Thorin thought--that was why he haunted her the most, why he was everywhere she was.

So Dis left. She packed her bags, taking cardigans and dogeared books and the broken jewelry box she loved the most. She left Erebor behind her, trailing only memories in her wake, and when she called home, she told Thorin, “I’m happier here.

“I’m happier,” she said. “I found someone--he’s nice, I think you’d like him.”

“I don’t want to come home,” she said. “It’s all too real there.”

“Not yet,” she said. “I’m not ready. Not yet.”

And she said, sounding like she was worlds away, “Give my love to everyone.”

“Everyone?” Thorin asked, and Frerin, sitting in the window, leaning too far out, echoed, _Everyone, Dis?_

“Everyone,” Dis said, and her voice cracked when she said, “Frerin most of all.”

Dis moved away when she was twenty-three; she left all her family behind her, all her world behind her, and Thorin watched her go, wishing he was as brave as she was. He stood on the steps leading to the front door, and he watched her little car drive down the gravel road.

 _Will you go?_ Frerin asked, leaning out the front door. The sunlight glinted over his face, turned him into motes of dust and tricks of light. Thorin breathed in deeply, then said,

“I don’t think I can.”

x

“My father was an architect,” Bilbo offers one morning, when he is standing on the gravel with Thorin. It has been nearly a week since Bilbo first arrived, and the house is growing more anxious. Frerin is growing more anxious, lurching from shadow to shadow as Thorin leads Bilbo through the house. Thorin thinks that it cannot be his imagination, the way a chill is growing in the air, the way the sunlight seems to be weaker each hour of each day. Even now, outside the house, the air is chill and the light is weak, and Thorin thinks he should point Bilbo toward the road and say, _Go_.

Instead, he asks, “Was he?”

“Mmm,” Bilbo hums. “He built a house for my mother. It’s where I live now, actually. Gorgeous place--It’s stone, mostly, but all paneled in wood. Big windows, airy halls--bright.”

“Erebor,” Thorin says, “is not a very bright place.”

“Oh, no--” Bilbo stutters, and it would be amusing, Thorin thinks, if he could not feel his house whispering to him, reaching for him, kissing the back of his neck.

“I didn’t mean,” Bilbo says, “that is--I wouldn’t have meant--” He lifts his hands, then drops them, looking as though he is lost and accepting defeat. It is only moments later, though, that Bilbo is looking at Thorin, then back up toward the house. “Was it ever?” he asks.

Thorin sighs heavily, then says, “Once, maybe. Long ago, before I was born, or even my grandfather. It has a long history,” he tells Bilbo.

“Of course,” Bilbo answers, and he turns, begins to walk away from the house, down toward the lake. Thorin follows after him, lifting his shoulders against the prickling on his neck.

“It’s a beautiful house, all the same,” Bilbo says, and he turns as he walks, smiling broadly at Thorin. “A little cold and a little empty, but very beautiful.”

And Thorin smiles at that, at the thought that his house is empty. He takes a few longer strides, until he is walking at Bilbo’s side, and then he asks, “Have you seen the rose garden yet?”

He spends the morning leading Bilbo through the gardens, past roses that smell sickly-sweet and old statues covered in moss. They walk on dewed grass and damp paving stones, around corner after corner after corner, until Bilbo says, “I think I’m lost.”

The bushes here have grown tall, tall enough that Thorin cannot see the house--but he can hear it, its mournful plea humming in the back of his skull. He thinks that, even if he were to be half a continent away, he would still hear his home--that no matter where he went, it would always call for him to come home. (He wonders if Dis can hear it, too; if she can hear the house whisper, _My love, my love, I’m here, my love_ , in the depths of her very bones.)

“It’s past the hedge,” he says, nodding at the hedge in question, and Bilbo takes off again, plunging back into the gardens. Turning, and turning, and turning, until--

“Is that someone in the window?” 

Thorin looks up to where Bilbo is pointing, to the open window where Frerin is standing. Thorin imagines him bursting into dust motes and sunlight; he imagines what it would be like, to pack his bags, to walk away--to leave nothing but trailing memories and the echoing of slamming doors. He looks up at the window, and Frerin looks down at him, and Thorin says, “Perhaps you should go.”

x

Gandalf and Bilbo leave at noon, when the sun is at its zenith. Thrain comes out to see them off, and Bestla with him. They stand on the top step, just outside the great doors, and Thorin stands four steps below them, halfway to the gravel way. 

“It really is a wondrous place,” Bilbo says. It’s impossible to miss the hurt in his face and in his voice, the bitterness that is creeping into his words. “A wonder of the world, for sure.”

There is nothing to say in return; no way to say, _There is stone in my blood and bones _, or to say, _There’s no room for anyone else._ There are no words left for anyone else, because they’ve all be given to Thorin’s family, to Dis and to Frerin, to the living who have already left him and the dead who never will. There is nothing to say, so he smiles at the air past Bilbo’s left shoulder.__

__“Thank you,” Gandalf says as he passes Thorin down the stairs, “for your hospitality.” He lays his hand on Thorin’s shoulder as he goes, and Thorin can feel it quiver with the feebleness of age._ _

__That is how they leave, in a little car that slowly rattles away, down the long gravel road that runs along the lake. Thorin watches them go, and his parents watch with him; they watch until the car disappears, and longer. They watch until the sun has left its high point, until a breeze has picked up across the lake. When they turn to go in, his mother holds out her arm, and Thorin obediently steps into it, letting Bestla wrap her arm around his waist._ _

__“I love you,” he murmurs, and she squeezes her arm around his waist, and says nothing at all._ _

__x_ _

__It is a quiet house, full of whispers and sighs. There are few living, but there are many dead, and when they whisper, it is of love, and jealousy, and a mindless loyalty that will never end. It is a house of cold lakes and open windows and the fragility of dust motes._ _

__“Give my love to everyone,” Dis says over the phone, and Thorin tucks the phone more firmly between his shoulder and his ear, holds onto it more tightly, like if he tries hard enough, he can feel the warmth of his sister’s hand._ _

__Frerin is sitting on his bed, scraping his heels over the wood floor, and when Frerin smiles at him--the left side still higher than the right--Thorin asks Dis, “Everyone?”_ _

__“Everyone,” Dis says, and her voice breaks when she says, “Tell Frerin I’ll come home someday.”_ _


End file.
